EaseCentral, an industry-leading SaaS platform solution for benefits & HR, today announced the closing of a $6.5 million Series A funding round led by Propel Venture Partners and followed by existing investors Freestyle Capital, Compound, Upside Partnership, and Transmedia Capital, advancing the company towards its goal to bring benefits and HR online for every small and medium-sized business.

The announcement coincides with EaseCentral's launch of two new offerings for health insurance brokers: an employee-facing mobile app and an integration with ADP enabling seamless payroll functionality. This Series A round brings EaseCentral's total funding to $11.5 million.

Since launching on the West Coast in 2015, the company has enjoyed rapid adoption, with more than 30,000 small businesses and one million employee users onboard after just two years. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company also operates a quickly growing office in Las Vegas.

This latest round of funding will help EaseCentral scale nationally, allowing its service to be accessed by brokers in additional states across the country. A New York City office is slated to open in the fall of 2017. The company is currently hiring sales, engineering, and marketing roles in all three locations to continue building out the company's service offerings. The funds will also help grow the company's core product services including additional HR partnerships and electronic data interchange (EDI) integrations to help brokers streamline their services even further.

"EaseCentral turns every broker into a supercharged digital broker. Even the smallest agency will be able to bring its expertise to a digital platform with accurate, up-to-date information, making open enrollment periods far less stressful for benefits managers and employees," says Ryan Gilbert, partner at Propel Venture Partners. "We're excited to partner with the EaseCentral team. They know insurance and have coupled their first-hand experience in this complex market with the technical strength and vision to rapidly advance the whole industry."

EaseCentral is pleased to announce that brokers can now offer EaseCentral's employee-facing platform on mobile devices. The app will allow full functionality at the employee level. Users can easily access insurance cards and plan coverage information, track PTO days conveniently, and store onboarding paperwork and W9s for later reference. EaseCentral mobile will be available for free download to all of EaseCentral's customers on iOS in the coming weeks.

EaseCentral is also unveiling its latest integration with ADP, which will enable easy employee payroll set up, the ability to sync benefit and payroll systems, and even automatically populate employee's changes in deductions, based on elections made during open enrollment. This integration will simplify additional processes for brokers using the industry-preferred payroll system without having to leave EaseCentral's platform.

"Many companies struggle to integrate core HCM and business applications. ADP Marketplace empowers employers to overcome that challenge so they can focus on boosting their business agility and their employees' success," said Don Weinstein, chief strategy officer, ADP. "EaseCentral's clients can access pre-integrated workforce data in real-time through one intuitive platform while tapping into a growing ecosystem of trusted HCM apps to meet their evolving business needs."

David Reid, CEO and co-founder of EaseCentral, credits the company's progress to passion. A former broker with 30+ years industry experience, David and his co-founder Courtney Guertin created EaseCentral with firsthand understanding of their clients' daily challenges. "Although the space had various names and concepts, the broker community didn't have a single scalable solution that truly met our industry's rapidly evolving needs."

"Our mission is disseminating the very best technology to brokers via the most user-friendly platform. Our team is dedicated to making that happen. Working with Propel Venture Partners will take our already industry-leading offerings to an entirely new level in 2018. Together, we are ready to see unparalleled growth over the next year."

About EaseCentral:

EaseCentral is a cloud-based benefits enrollment software platform built for insurance brokers and employers. EaseCentral makes it simple to set up and manage benefits, onboard new hires, stay compliant, and offer employees one destination for all their human resources information. Started in 2012 in San Francisco by employee benefits veteran, David Reid, and web and engineering architect, Courtney Guertin, EaseCentral works with insurance brokers and small businesses to create seamless HR and benefits processes on a single, easy-to-use platform, and has offices in San Diego and Las Vegas. In 2015, EaseCentral was launched on the West Coast and is now among the most widely adopted, fastest growing solutions for brokers and employers in the area, with over 30,000 employers and nearly 1 million enrollees. For more information, head to: www.easecentral.com.

About Propel:

Propel Venture Partners is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm focused on investment opportunities at the intersection of technology and finance. The Propel team believes the future of financial services will be realized by rethinking and rebuilding, and partners with technology-driven entrepreneurs who are transforming the market with their vision and expertise.